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How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

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81–90 of 112 posts

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#81
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get that there can be too much of a good thing etc Similarly, people that run 45 minutes a day are in great shape. But if you run a half marathon every day, you will age quickly You’re exactly right, too much of a good thing. And for hard strength training, you can hit that tipping point very quickly. Probably within an hour a day if you’re going hard

For strength you can do a workout within like 25~35min that is taking it slow like browsing socials during pauses. Talking about programs like rippetoe, 5x5, 531 etc. Unless you have elite genetics or are on juice you don't really need to go beyond those programs.

Unless of course you’re training practical, useful strength. Which requires intense bursts of weight training, and balance between tempo runs, rucks with 35-40% of body weight, and slow run/jogs. Weightlifting is a small part of a larger picture of strength and being able to put it to use. Cardio is the single most important thing you can train because without a gas tank you’re just a fat, slow, strong slob.

You don’t need to be elite nor on juice to do this. All you need is a purpose. I do this all the time, am over 35, and not on juice. My fitness is great but no where near elite.

Rippetoe is an obnoxious jackass and you can venture to his forums (cult) to see it. He’s great at making fat, out of shape, strongmen. He’s not great at producing a fighter, tradesman, or operator. When you want to know what works look to the people actually using their fitness not morons like him who proselytize and look like the hardest thing they do all day is eat a pack of bon Bons.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it actually seems fairly plausible. I was a fairly untrained 70kg forty-something when I went to the gym and very quickly found that as I did a bit of hiking, I could max out the standing calf raise machine at 155kg. This involves having a very padded 155kg on your shoulders while in a standing position. It felt to me like that was the most my shoulders and back could cope with, and it's more than double body…

It’s a huge difference having a loaded barbell which can move in every dimension on your shoulders versus a calf raise machine which is fixed in place and cannot move around! I’ve squatted barbells since roughly 2006 and the feeling of having more than 100kg on your shoulders is very intense, even if you’ve trained up to it. It feels like it’s crushing your whole body and even breathing is hard. The idea that an untr…

The OP didn't say they could move around... they said "unrack and stand there".

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#83
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For strength you can do a workout within like 25~35min that is taking it slow like browsing socials during pauses. Talking about programs like rippetoe, 5x5, 531 etc. Unless you have elite genetics or are on juice you don't really need to go beyond those programs.

Unless of course you’re training practical, useful strength. Which requires intense bursts of weight training, and balance between tempo runs, rucks with 35-40% of body weight, and slow run/jogs. Weightlifting is a small part of a larger picture of strength and being able to put it to use. Cardio is the single most important thing you can train because without a gas tank you’re just a fat, slow, strong slob. You don’…

Rippetoe gives good advice on lifting form and programming especially for novices but I'd look wider for diet and nutrition advice.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wealth per se For example, if you have $10m but never go to the doctor, you won't benefit from the medical care discrepancy between wealthy and poor

But you won't have poverty related stress.

But you will have "hey man lend me 10000 my moms dying" stress

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#86
>But jumping straight into lifting heavy weights is not recommended. Instead, experts recommend focusing on technique and starting with loads that can be comfortably lifted before progressively increasing the training.

I'm not sure if its because I'm in the 'advanced' category of lifting, but I have recently been going against this common advice.

I recommend people get to heavy weights as quick as possible. Adding a minimum of 5lbs each time they lift, but more often 10+. At some point the weight becomes too heavy and you compensate with bad form. Wait wait wait before you downvote, I have a rational here:

Your auxiliary muscles that allowed you to do bad form are tired now. Lower the weight and 'clean them up' with good form.

I'm not alone in this mindset, but it goes against conventional wisdom.

People forget that muscles are being used even when we do bad form.

Just don't get injured. Pain = stop right away.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#87
post #74
post #24

Carrying things on your head/shoulders is surprisingly efficient. Many people can unrack a barbell with double their body weight and just stand there for a bit without having done any strength training at all. The trouble is getting the load into that convenient orientation. Taking something from the ground and putting it over your own head is where all the bad stuff happens. Once it's up there it's not as big a deal…

Agree it’s efficient, don’t agree that an untrained person could unbrace double bodyweight. I weigh 90kg and can squat ~190kg. Having that much on my back feels HEAVY. I think if you haven’t built up to it before you will not be able to do that

It will feel heavy, but you are not lifting it more than a few cm (and at the point where your body has the most leverage).

Remember the point is most humans couldn't get the weight there, but if somehow it already was they could hold it. That isn't a useful thing to do so we rarely test it.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a strange comment. Wealth has nothing to do with longevity and yet here's all the ways how wealth CAUSES longevity.

>Wealth per se For example, if you have $10m but never go to the doctor, you won't benefit from the medical care discrepancy between wealthy and poor

Just my experience but I have never found the medical industry useful for health. I have found they mostly tinker with feedback loops to give the illusion of health.

Eating right, exercise, supplementation of the things I am missing from my diet, clean air, avoiding chronic stressful situations and people are the only things I have found to benefit me. But that's just my own anecdotal experience. (n=1)

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#89
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet, if you look at people whose everyday jobs look a lot like functional strength training, eg construction workers, my general impression is that their bodies are in worse condition than the average population (who's not in great shape already), and far worse than people with sedentary jobs who do fitness training. Really? That's not my observation.

I wasn't in construction but I did spend three years working as an arborist / forester between 2022 and 2025 whilst taking a little break from tech after a long 20-year stint. I've been in good shape since I was 30 with strength training, cardio and even a little stint as a masters level competitive olympic weightlifter. A long way of saying, I know my body fairly well. Two years into climbing trees in domestic setti…

"when AI took my job I bought a chain saw"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/opinion/artificial-intell...

Sorry, don't have an archiv link.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#90
post #28

I once carried a log that weighed about double my body weight and carried it 100ft. My back has never been the same, I really don't recommend it unless you know what you're doing.

I managed to carry my bodyweight in each hand for a strength event (100kg). I guess the total distance was 20m? I was OK afterwards, and I'm no freak of strength.

if you have the grip strength to hold that, you have solid core strength already.

And you are carrying in your hands, not balanced on your head-- which totally alters the stress on the spine.

So yes, cograts on your feat, that is a pretty cool level to hit, but it doesn't counter the basic advice of "grow into it" instead of "max from day one"

Also, you did this "once". If the accident rate is 1:100, doing it once without getting hurt is not very surprising.

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